March 2020

This issue sees the announcement of the shortlists for the 2020 International Opera Awards.

We were very sorry to hear of the death of the great soprano Mirella Freni as we were going to press. She will be celebrated and remembered in our April issue. 

In our continuing series of articles to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the birth of Beethoven, Manfred Honeck, music director of the Pittsburgh Orchestra, discusses Fidelio with John Allison. 

The soprano Rachel Willis-Sørensen, adding to her extensive repertory of roles, sings her first Alcina in Dresden this month, and talks here to Roger Pines. 

As more and more South African singers triumph on the world’s opera stages, Christopher Ballantine investigates this exciting development. 

Andrew Clark assesses the life and work of the German director Harry Kupfer, who died on 30 December, and Anne Evans pays tribute. Hugh Canning remembers the magnificent tenor Peter Schreier. 

Selina Cadell, whose company OperaGlass Works presents The Turn of the Screw at Wilton’s Music Hall in London at the end of March, chooses The Rake’s Progress in the recording conducted by Riccardo Chailly with Philip Langridge, Cathryn Pope and Samuel Ramey, as a personal favourite. 

Our disc of the month is Leonore, with Marlis Petersen, Robin Johannsen, Maximilian Schmitt, Dimitry Ivaschchenko and René Jacobs conducting the Freiburger Barockorchester and the Zürcher Sing-Akademie (Harmonia Mundi). 

New productions reviewed include: Street Scene at Opera North, Olga Neuwirth’s Orlando and Moniuszko’s Halka in Vienna, Scarlatti’s Il trionfo dell’onore in Tokyo, Don Giovanni in Miami, The Snow Queen in Munich, Il pirata in Madrid, Julietta in Ostrava, Wozzeck in New York, Guillaume Tell in Amsterdam, Madame Favart in Caen, Prince Igor in Paris, Don Carlos in Stuttgart, Die Ägyptische Helena in Milan, L’Ange de Nisida in Bergamo, Rusalka in Strasbourg and Samson et Dalila in Berlin.